Crowner's Quest Read online

  Gwyn’s large, shaggy head was peering around the privy. ‘I suppose he stepped off the seat after tying the cord to a rafter.’ Looking up into the gloom, he could just make out where the rope was knotted around one of the rough supports for the thatched roof.

  John de Alencon shook his cropped grey head sadly. ‘I cannot believe it. Self-destruction is a mortal sin. What man of the Church, especially a senior canon, would take his own life – and on the eve of the birthday of his Saviour, above all times?’ He passed a hand over his eyes in genuine distress. ‘I just cannot accept it, John.’

  The coroner had been silently studying the corpse, his hawk-like face drawn into a scowl of concentration. ‘I don’t think you need accept it, my friend,’ he growled. ‘Gwyn, come and look at this.’ He beckoned his henchman to look more closely in the dim light at the side of the cadaver’s neck. The monk’s girdle-cord cut deeply into the left side under the angle of the jaw, then passed around to the right, where it was pulled sharply upwards and away from the skin in an inverted V-shape to reach a knot placed alongside the ear. From there, the cord stretched tautly up to the roof-beam. ‘We’ll see better when we cut him down, but look here,’ he commanded, pointing a finger at the skin below the ligature.

  Gwyn of Polruan put his face closer until his bulbous nose almost touched the corpse. ‘There’s another mark around the neck, lower down.’

  The coroner looked grim. ‘It can happen. I remember when King Richard executed all those Moors at Acre, and again at Ascalon, some hanged fellows had two marks. But it’s unusual.’

  The Cornishman cast his mind back more than three years to when he had been with de Wolfe at the Third Crusade. At the fall of Acre, hundreds of Saracen prisoners were massacred, most by the sword, lance and mace – but many had been hanged.

  ‘True, the rope can bite first lower down, then slip up with the weight of the body.’ He sounded reluctant to agree.

  The coroner’s finger moved to the back of the cadaver’s neck. ‘But it can’t do this!’ he snapped.

  The Archdeacon and his officer craned their necks to look, and Thomas de Peyne was almost jumping up and down behind them to get a better view.

  On the nape of the neck, just below the monk’s girdle-cord, the lower ligature mark crossed over itself, two short marks lying above and below the brownish-red line. John de Alencon looked questioningly at de Wolfe, his horror temporarily overtaken by curiosity.

  ‘He’s been garrotted – the cord was thrown over his head, the two ends crossed and pulled tight,’ grated the coroner. He stepped back and motioned to Gwyn. ‘Cut him down – gently now.’ He pulled the Archdeacon back to the door to make room, while Gwyn sliced through the cord high up and took the weight of the dead priest easily in his other brawny arm. The clerk stood watching in fascination, furiously making the Sign of the Cross.

  ‘Bring him into the house, where there’s a better light,’ ordered de Wolfe, and strode off ahead to the back door of the canon’s dwelling. Gwyn carried the corpse in his arms like a baby, the head lolling back, the fatal rope trailing on the ground.

  With the Archdeacon, Thomas, a few junior priests and some servants following, they went through a door and up a passage into a chamber that had a simple bed as the only furniture, apart from a large wooden crucifix on the wall. The canon’s steward, a fat, middle-aged man with tears streaming from his eyes, stood wringing his hands alongside the bed, as Gwyn gently laid the body upon it.

  ‘Get more lights, Alfred,’ commanded the Archdeacon, and the steward hurried out, gulping orders at the other servants.

  De Wolfe stood at the foot of the narrow bed and laid a consoling hand on his friend’s shoulder. ‘You knew him well, John?’

  The senior cleric nodded. ‘Even before I came from Winchester eight years ago. I had met him in London when he was still at Holy Trinity. A good man, very learned in the history of the Church.’

  As they waited for more illumination, John asked more questions. ‘What did he do in the cathedral community?’

  ‘He was a regular canon and had a prebend, like the rest of us, but held no particular office. Most of his time away from daily worship was spent in the cathedral library. I’m not quite sure what he was doing – you would need to ask Canon Jordan de Brent, the archivist.’

  The coroner stroked his long jaw, dark with black stubble. ‘Was he politically active? I mean, in the Church hierarchy. Could he have made enemies?’

  De Alencon’s lean face wore a sad smile, in spite of the tragic circumstances. ‘Never! He was quiet and retiring, hardly said a word at the chapter meetings. An unworldly man, his mind was lost in books and manuscripts.’ He waved a hand around the bare room. ‘You see this, a Spartan life, unlike some of our fellows, I’m afraid. Too many canons have forgotten the Rule of St Chrodegang and relish lives of comfort and even luxury. But not poor Robert de Hane here.’

  The steward and a servant came back with a three-branched candlestick and a pair of tallow dips, which greatly improved the lighting. De Wolfe seized the candelabrum and advanced to the bed, with Gwyn on the other side. ‘Let’s have a good look at this. How much of the cord did you leave attached to the beam?’

  Gwyn held his hands about a yard apart. ‘About this much. Another few inches were sticking out from the double knot around the rafter.’

  De Wolfe held up the cut end of the rope that was still around the canon’s neck. ‘Another half yard here. Could he have reached from the privy seat to tie it to the roof?’

  The Cornishman pursed his lips under the luxuriant cascade of ginger moustache. ‘He’s not very tall, but perhaps he could just do it on tiptoe.’

  De Wolfe turned his attention to the knot in the monkish girdle. It was a pair of simple half-hitches, not a slip-knot. He pulled on the cord and the knot lifted well away from the skin. ‘There’s a gap in the mark under that, as would be expected,’ he muttered, half to himself. The upper mark, tight under the front and right side of the jaw, was a clear groove with a faint spiral pattern corresponding to the twist of the flaxen cord. But slightly lower was a similar, less pronounced mark, with narrow reddened margins, that circled the whole circumference of the neck. As he had pointed out in the privy, near the back of the neck this lower mark showed a blurred blob of abrasion on the skin, from which two short tails projected, one in either direction. He used a bony finger to point it out to the Archdeacon. ‘That’s not a hanging mark, John. Someone has dropped the cord over his head and pulled the two ends tight from behind.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked the worried cleric. A dead canon was bad enough, but a murdered one was ten times worse.

  ‘No doubt about it – it’s almost horizontal and there’s no gap where the rope pulled upward to the roof, like the other false mark. And those red swollen edges mean that it was done during life. They can’t be seen on the upper line, so he was dead when that was caused.’

  Thomas was hovering behind like a bumble-bee, stealing glimpses from beneath the larger men’s elbows. He was desperate to be included in the affair and, despite the squint, his sharp eyes could see something in the candlelight. ‘His mouth, Crowner! Surely that’s bruising on the upper lip.’

  Gwyn prodded him with a muscular elbow. ‘Leave this to the men, dwarf,’ he grunted, half teasing, half serious.

  The coroner, though he often joined with Gwyn in making the disgraced priest the butt of their humour, had learned a sneaking regard for Thomas’s powers of observation. He looked at the florid face of Robert de Hane and confirmed that even within the pinkish-blue hue of the skin, there were a couple of small patches of a deeper shade below the nostrils. Taking the lips in the fingers of each hand, he turned them back to expose the gums and brown, decayed teeth. ‘Ha, the plot thickens!’ he exclaimed.

  On the inner surfaces of the upper and lower lips, there were angry red patches and a small tear where the lining had been forced against a jagged front tooth. Under the middle of the upper lip, the little band of mem
brane that anchored the lip to the gum was ripped and had bled. ‘His mouth was either struck or violently squeezed,’ declared de Wolfe, an authority on injuries after twenty years on a variety of battlefields.

  ‘Held across the mouth to stop him crying out?’ hazarded the clerk, emboldened by his successful contribution to the investigation.

  ‘Let’s have a look at the rest of his body, Gwyn,’ commanded the coroner.

  Under his black habit, the prebendary wore only a white linen nightshirt and a pair of thick woollen hose. The coroner’s officer began to wrestle off the outer robe, helped ineffectually by Thomas. ‘He’s starting to stiffen up – and he’s cold, except in the armpits,’ observed Gwyn.

  De Wolfe nodded. ‘I noticed his jaw was tight when I turned his lips. He’s been dead a few hours.’

  Soon they had all the clothes off and the sparely built priest lay pathetically naked on his own bed. Instinctively, John de Alencon reached across and, for the sake of decency, draped the nightshirt across the lower belly and thighs.

  The trunk was dead white, but there was a purplish discoloration of the legs below the knees. ‘He’s been hanging for a while, the blood has had time to settle in the lowest parts,’ commented the coroner.

  ‘So he was hung up soon after death as he still has a little heat left in him,’ reasoned Gwyn.

  John turned to the steward, hovering in anguish near the door. ‘When was your master last seen alive, Alfred?’ he snapped.

  ‘He came back from vespers, sir, at about the fifth bell. He ate his supper in the dining room – I served him myself.’

  ‘Did he seem his normal self then?’ asked the Archdeacon.

  ‘Yes, sir, he was reading a small book as he ate.’ Alfred snivelled and wiped an eye. ‘Then he went to bed. As it is Christ Mass, he should have been going to the special service, some two hours earlier than the usual matins at midnight.’

  De Alencon looked at the coroner. ‘He was not there. I noticed, as I must keep track of who is absent.’

  John de Wolfe grunted, his favourite form of response. ‘He couldn’t have been there as he was dead by then, if the stiffening is coming on now.’ He scowled at Alfred. ‘Did anyone visit him this evening?’

  ‘Not that I know of, Crowner. Once he retires to this room, he is left in peace to sleep or study. His vicar or the secondaries might know better than I, but I doubt it.’

  The ranking of the ecclesiastical community below the twenty-four canons consisted first of the vicars-choral, minor clergy over the age of twenty-four who deputised for their seniors so that their perpetual attendance at services was reduced. Then came the secondaries, adolescents over eighteen training for the priesthood, and below them, the choristers, young boys who might stay on to enter holy orders later.

  The coroner turned back to the corpse and leaned over the bed to study it intently.

  ‘The arms – look there,’ squeaked Thomas.

  His master glared at him. ‘I can see for myself, damn you!’ he muttered testily, motioning to Gwyn to lift up the left arm. On the white skin, between the shoulder and the elbow, was a scatter of blue bruises, each half the size of a penny.

  ‘They’re on the other arm, too,’ volunteered Gwyn. ‘And they look fresh to me.’

  De Wolfe gestured to his officer to turn the body over on to its face. ‘Let’s see the back of his neck.’

  At the centre of the nape, a deep groove began and passed around the left side of the neck. On the right side of the neck, the groove imprinted by the noose rose towards the ear, then vanished. Below it, another continuous groove passed around the right side to the voice-box in front and joined the common groove on the left.

  ‘What do those marks on his arms imply, John?’ asked the Archdeacon.

  The coroner stood back while Gwyn rolled the canon face-up again. ‘Grip-marks, where he was seized. Those round bruises are from hard pressure by fingertips.’

  De Alencon’s lean face was a picture of grief. ‘What terror and pain he must have suffered. He was such a mild man, with never any exposure to violence – and then to end like this. What’s to be done, John?’

  A new voice answered him from the doorway. ‘A hunt for his killers, with no effort spared, Archdeacon.’ It was the sheriff, the coroner’s dandyish brother-in-law. He strode into the room and looked down at the dead priest with more indignation than sorrow. ‘What a thing to happen on the eve of Christ Mass!’

  Almost on cue, the great bell of the cathedral opposite began tolling for the delayed matins. ‘I must go. I cannot miss the service even for this tragedy,’ explained the Archdeacon. ‘And I must tell the other canons what’s happened.’ He went towards the door, then turned back to the coroner and sheriff. ‘I will send word to the Bishop as soon as the gates open at dawn. But I know that although this happened within the cathedral precinct, he would want you secular authorities to deal with it.’

  Although they were inside the city walls, the whole of the cathedral Close was outside the jurisdiction of the burgesses of Exeter, which often gave rise to friction. But murder was against the King’s peace and even a bishop would be unlikely to exclude the law officers.

  ‘I suggest the dead man lies here until the morning,’ said de Wolfe. ‘There’s little point in setting up a hue and cry in the middle of the night, especially as he’s been dead for hours and the trail is cold.’

  Richard de Revelle waved an elegantly gloved hand at the Archdeacon. ‘Tell Bishop Marshal that the sheriff will spare no effort to bring these devils to justice. They’ll be dangling from the gallows by the time he returns from Gloucester.’

  At this the coroner caught Gwyn’s eye, but his henchman’s face remained impassive, thoughde Wolfe could read his thoughts about the sheriff’s arrogance. As de Alencon left, followed by the anxious steward and most of the residents, the two main law officers of Devon faced each other across the corpse, flanked by Gwyn and Thomas de Peyne.

  ‘So what’s this all about, John?’ demanded Richard. He stood with one hand on his hip, his fine green cloak thrown back over one shoulder to reveal his richly embroidered tunic of fine linen. The smooth skin of his rather narrow face was pink, both from the cold air outside and from John’s best wine.

  Grudgingly, the coroner told him what little they knew so far. De Revelle seemed unconvinced, although he had just assured the Archdeacon that the killers would soon be found. ‘You find a man swinging by his own girdle-cord in his own privy, yet you immediately claim he’s been murdered?’

  As always, his tone of patronising criticism made de Wolfe itch to punch him on his sharp nose but, with an effort, he held his temper in check. ‘A senior priest is hardly likely to jeopardise his entry into heaven by taking the life God gave him – especially almost on his Saviour’s birthday! But we don’t need theology to prove that. Just look there.’ He pointed at the still figure on the bed. ‘Does a suicide bruise his own arms, strike himself in the mouth and then, before he hangs, throttle himself from behind?’ he asked sarcastically.

  The sheriff sniffed delicately. He had no interest in the state of the body, only in any political implications that might involve him. He needed to avoid trouble, but also to milk the best advantage for himself with influential people like Bishop Henry Marshal, brother to William, Marshal of England. ‘Cover the fellow up, for God’s sake!’ he snapped imperiously at Gwyn, flicking a glove at the folded blanket at the foot of the bed. Then he turned to leave. ‘I’ll send up to the castle to get Ralph Morin to send men-at-arms to search the town.’

  Morin was the constable of Rougemont, the castle perched at the highest point of the city in the northeast corner of the walls. It took its name from the colour of the local sandstone from which it was built.

  De Wolfe was scornful of this useless gesture. ‘What are they going to do after midnight? Beat every passerby into a confession?’ Knowing de Revelle’s methods, he thought that this was not as fanciful as it might sound.

  The sheriff g
ave John another of his pitying looks, as if humouring a backward child. ‘And how would my new coroner handle it, then?’

  John angrily opened his mouth to shout that he was the King’s coroner, not de Revelle’s, but bit back the words: they had been through these arguments time and again. The sheriff resented the establishment of coroners in England four months previously, but he was in no position to defy the edicts of Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury and Chief Justiciar to Richard the Lionheart. ‘We need to know why Robert de Hane was killed,’ he said tersely. ‘Then that should tell us who killed him. Rushing aimlessly around the streets will get us nowhere.’

  ‘Was it robbery? Some of these prebendaries are rich men,’ asked de Revelle, going off at a tangent.

  For answer, de Wolfe waved a hand around the bare room. ‘Not this one. He has a reputation for a modest, even Spartan way of life. There’s little worth killing for here.’

  The sheriff seemed to lose interest. ‘We’ll leave it until the morning, then. I must get back to my good wife.’

  John straightened his back until his head almost touched the ceiling beams. ‘I’ll walk back to my house with you, then.’

  De Revelle pulled on his gloves. ‘Lady Eleanor has gone back to Rougemont. I sent her with an escort when I came here. Your guests have dispersed, I’m afraid.’ He said it with a certain spiteful glee, knowing that his sister would blame her husband stridently for the collapse of her cherished social occasion.

  The sheriff was right, for when John arrived in Martin’s Lane ten minutes later, he found the hall deserted, the table scattered forlornly with empty cups, tankards and scraps of food. Brutus still lay before the dying fire and gave him a slow wag from his bushy tail, the only welcome he was to get that night.

  When he climbed the wooden stairs from the backyard to the solar chamber, he found a grim-faced Matilda sitting in the only chair. The rabbit-toothed Lucille was unpinning her hair and helping her off with her new kirtle of stiff brocade and laying out her bed-shift.